Summary Of Floating By Karen Brennan

The book I read is called "The Raft" by Stephanie Stuve-Bodeen. Its about this girl named Robie Mitchell and she is staying with her aunt on Oahu, while taking a break from her life with her parents on Midway Atoll. At fifteen, she’s a little rebellious, getting her nose pierced without her parents’ permission, and wanting more independence. After her aunt is called to Los Angeles for work, Robie convinces her that she cans stay by herself. However, after a man accosts her the first night, Robie wants to go home. Knowing she’ll be able to take the supply flight to Midway the next night, she tries to reach her parents, but the satellites are down. Shortly after her flight takes off, the plane encounters severe turbulence. Larry, the pilot, attempts to fly ahead of the storm front, but the plane loses an engine and begins to experience hydraulic failure.

In the book “The Memory Keeper's Daughter” by Kim Edwards a doctor and his wife have twins and the first child is a healthy boy but then the second child that comes out is a little girl with the signs of down syndrome and he asks his Nurse to take the baby away to an institution while he tells his wife the baby girl died. Through out the entire book it is a struggle for Dr. Henry's wife Norah to have closure with the fact that her baby girl is said to be dead and she never saw her, held her, or cared for her. Kim Edwards shows through the whole book that we are only human, the themes that life is beyond our control and through the connection between suffering and joy.

I let my eyes wander out to the empty field outside, thinking of the future and the past. I part another chapter of my life to be a mother. Perhaps I am giving up my independence like sacrifices to please an angry god, or rather goddess. The answers are not all there, but at least one part of my world is established, a small but important comfort. I look towards the child one last time as if she were a mirage in a hot desert. She no longer cries in her father’s arms, voice and energy drained from its earlier tantrums into existence.

When the woman finds the baby, she acknowledges all the signs that the baby is dead but seems to create a separate reality. She becomes delusional and takes the baby in as if it was hers; feeding, bathing, and caring for it constantly. She even imagines that the house she is a mid in belongs to her, the baby, and the pool man. In the end she says "We made a pretty picture standing there. Rose, me, and him." The woman's delusional state is provoked by her inability to maintain a family. She desperately wanted a family of her own. The author constantly uses words like "my" and "mine" that show possession. The woman's way of coping with tremendous loss and suffering was creating an alternate world. Danticat adds the woman's escape from reality to portray the desperate desire of Haitians to prosper from a life of poverty.

We had just celebrated the new year, a sign of new beginnings. The past fall my mother and I had a fight and were only communicating on a need to know. I had a boyfriend at the time, we had been dating for almost two years. I loved him and he loved me and I felt like nothing could ever go wrong, boy was I wrong. It was a cold morning, I woke up feeling strange but I could not quite figure out why. Jacob, my boyfriend, was the one who put the idea in my head. A couple hours later my life had went from just a normal nineteen year old, to being a nineteen year old facing being a mother. I was pregnant and there was nothing I could do to change that. Telling my parents, especially my mother was nearly impossible, “[a]nd after seeing my mother’s disappointed face once again, something inside of me began to die” (Tan 321).

What is the point of any piece of great literature? Or rather, what is great literature? Some would say that accomplished literature is a way of exceptionally telling a story. However, what is the point of storytelling? In many cases, stories are told for entertainment. However, most stories have a moral or theme conveying an important message about life or how to live it. This is the point of great literature, to convey this message beautifully. Some pieces of great literature are The Story-Teller, by Saki, Geraldine Moore the Poet, by Toni Cade Bambara, and Enemy Territory, by William Melvin Kelley. To understand the themes of great literature, you must also understand how to analyze it. The content

Have you ever heard the saying “There are two sides to every story”? The book “Breathing Underwater” by Alex Flinn is written in first person view, however there is two sides to this book. The main character, Nick Andreas, recieves a restraining order from court because he is accused of hitting his girlfriend, Caitlin. These two point of views are very different but at the same time very similar.

Reading this book has been interesting and heartbreaking experience. A Year of Magical Thinking, a journey through the grieving process. While dealing with the death of her husband, she is confronted with the sickness of her only child. This book touches me, and it makes me think of what would happen if my loved one died. This paper is a reflection of my thoughts and feelings about this woman’s journey that has been explored by book and video. I will also explore the author’s adjustment process, and how she views her changed self.

Feelings of desperation and worry flourished my body as I watched my mother with tubes in her mouth getting rushed to the operating room. “Is mommy going to make it out alive?”. “Will I become an orphan?”. These are the exact thoughts that were running through my mind. In life one minute you could be decorating your Christmas tree and the other you're sitting in an uncomfortable chair of the

One way I carefully studied this piece was I saw it as the wife saying that even if she is floating, her husband does not pay attention to her and just wants things that he wants before herself. In the story, she said, "... and I floated up, I held my knees in my arms and floated across as if I was sitting on a rug." In her mind, she could do anything imaginable, like floating, and her husband would still not admit/recognize/respond to what she had been doing. Sooner or later she'll want to fly off, just like me, only outside..." I believe what she is saying by this was that she had liked and respected that baby that even though it was raw from the cold, had to change her diaper and even the baby's little under shirt, and had pale baby skin but can float wherever it wanted. Possibly the wife thought of it as being her fault and that is why she does not want to believe that her baby has died.

Countless women have a difficult time throughout pregnancy, a few even lose their child to a miscarriage or a stillborn, such as Rose of Sharon did. Sadly, my great-grandmother had a few miscarriages, as so have several other women. After talking to my grandmother, I have come to the conclusion that although they didn’t have the chance to watch their child experience life, they still love their child the same.

A person may ask a friend, “What color is this book?” The friend would say the cover is black, but the first person would argue that it is red. The truth is, they are both right. The color of the book depends upon which side of it is exposed to the person. This situation is comparable to the difference in world views. Depending upon which side one looks at a situation, will determine the actions that a person would take. In the story of Spirit Catches You and You Fall Down, the relationship between the family of a sick Hmong child, Lia, and Lia’s doctors, Neil and Peggy Ernst, seems to be harder to remedy than Lia’s illness itself. When looking at Lia’s dad, Nao Koa, and one of the main doctors that Lia is treated by, Neil Ernst, the difference in world views are opposite ends of the spectrum. Although Nao Koa and Neil Ernst want the same thing for Lia, their conflicting world views on the nature of life and the purpose of life are the most challenging component of treating Lia’s rare form of epilepsy.

Life is full of ups and downs, small or large, no matter who is living it. “Floating” by Karen Brennan is a story about a woman who thinks she can just float away from her realistic problems. The whole story is told through the perspective of a troubled woman and the author did this to show that if guilt and pain eat at a person this is what can happen and in this case it is a miscarriage of a child belonging to the “woman”. The author uses symbolism to emphasize her claims on guilt. The whole story is portrayed in first person with no names mentioned in the story because it makes it more relatable to general and heartbroken people in society. The author displays a woman who had a miscarriage and is torn deeply about her own loss and became completely depressed; she is also becomes delusional and believes her baby is still alive and is her little secret, and lastly on some deep inner level she knows that her baby is dead and feels a tremendous amount of guilt for losing her own child. The author shows that the miscarriage can be a metaphor for any situation in life: if something is lost, one cannot just give up, and become completely obsessed over memories of the past, memories were made to shape who one is not dictate the present actions.

A woman by the name of Louise Drinkwater gave birth to a baby with Down syndrome named Molly. Louise was overjoyed to have a baby girl and she has seen life through a different lense with Molly in her life. Louise was happy that she chose to give the gift of life to Molly, unlike Marie Ideson, who aborted her Down syndrome child, Lillie. Marie lives with the daily regret aborting Lillie, because she’ll never be able to have the daughter she always wanted. After the abortion, Marie saw Lillie’s lifeless body and up until this day she’ll never be able to forget what she saw. Louise Drinkwater has no regrets with allowing Molly to live, but Marie Ideson continues to have grief over aborting Lillie (Terzo).

Today was funeral day. My mom’s funeral. It was a dark October thursday, the clouds were brewing a storm. A slight breeze disturbed my neck. My uncomfortable suit sleeves bellowed in the cold breeze.. I hadn’t felt any emotions since the day of her death, which was weeks ago, almost as if my emotion is grey. It was warm then, as my mind was too. Nowadays, up until today, my mind has been a dark fog, as if my mind was released into the sky, darkening everyone’s day, arriving at my mom’s funeral or just to cuddle up with their friends and family in front of a warm crackling fire, telling the stories of their childhood and how times were better. Not me, my dad usually ignored me and he only worked on managing my mom’s fortune. Yeah. My mom’s